It’s apartheid, say Israeli ambassadors to South Africa

So, exactly what did former Israeli ambassadors Alon Liel and Ilan Baruch learn from their postings in South Africa? Not much, judging from their claims on 8 June.
First, they say Israel drew inspiration for the West Bank from the Bantustans. That’s totally faulty. Anyone with elementary knowledge of South Africa knows that the white nationalist government decided to create the Bantustans, imposed them and defined the borders. It was unilateral and one-sided.
On the other hand, the division of the West Bank into Areas A, B and C between Israelis and Palestinians was agreed upon between them in the Oslo Accords of 1993. The arrangement was meant to last for five years when a Palestinian state would come into being. Unhappily, both sides screwed up – Israel seized land and Palestinians stepped up terror attacks. The promised Palestinian state must still be formed.
Two, each Bantustan had its own government, albeit nominal and vassal-like. Most of them had contiguous areas of land.
On the other hand, the myriad Palestinian communities that Liel/Baruch refer to are merely towns and villages scattered through the West Bank. There is not the slightest resemblance to the Bantustans.
It’s quite possible, as Liel/Baruch suggest, that the late Ariel Sharon took a fancy to the Bantustans when he visited South Africa and saw them in terms of Israel/Palestine. But, as the former ambassadors cannot but know about quite-recent Israeli history, a fundamental change occurred inside Sharon when he became prime minister and faced the realities of ruling: at the time of his untimely death, he was clearly heading towards separation through two-states – which is the current policy of the Palestinian Authority and is backed by the US, EU, UK, Russia and most of the world.
Third, Bantustans were a racist device. Called “separate development” they were intended to fool the world by trying to put a pretty face on naked apartheid.
The West Bank is entirely different. As Liel/Baruch must surely know, Israel’s occupation did not simply fall from the sky but is due to well-known historical events. Jordan controlled it from 1948 (and suppressed any Palestinian political activity). In 1967, Jordan joined the war between Israel and Egypt/Syria and attacked Israel from the east with artillery fire. Israeli troops crossed onto the West Bank and drove the vaunted Arab Legion back to Jordan.
After some hesitation, Israel decided to remain on the West Bank as a buffer zone against possible Jordanian attack. Its motivation gradually broadened and strengthened: messianic beliefs came into play with Jews believing God had given them that part of the world. There was, and is, also greed, with land seized for Jewish settlement.
The occupation continues to this day. It is an issue of contention in Israel with many wanting to end it. For the moment, right-wing views prevail and the Israeli army and the settlers are in control.
The bottom line is that race is not the determining factor. Security remains a paramount issue with fears, rightly or wrongly, that an independent Palestinian state could become a terrorist neighbour. Suicide bombings, stabbings and car killings emanating from the West Bank have strengthened such Israeli belief. And messianism and greed have become embedded.
Fourth, Liel/Baruch are surprisingly, really astonishingly, glib about Gaza. They look the other way about its complexity. It was occupied by Egypt until Israel conquered it in the1967 war. Israel offered to return the territory. Egypt declined. Israel left it in 2005 but controls the northern border and the sea and air. Egypt controls the southern border and treats Gazans toughly: it closes the border for lengthy periods, leaving Palestinians stranded, and has destroyed about 1,000 tunnels built by Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, to smuggle in arms, explosives, food and even cows.
Egypt views Hamas with hostility, blaming it for complicity in the Islamicist attacks on its soldiers in Sinai.
Gaza is a colossal problem for Israel. The territory has limited resources except for wonderful beaches and some agriculture. Hamas seized power in 2007 and murdered its Palestinian Fatah opponents. It refuses to accept Israel’s existence and is openly genocidal in declaring that it wants to kill all the Jews. Israel’s siege of the territory is meant to block Hamas from bringing in arms and missiles. But, as last month’s violent outbreak showed, Hamas manages to build up an arsenal of thousands of missiles and fires them at Israeli civilian areas whenever it wants to.
Fifth, Liel/Baruch equate Israel with apartheid, “as we saw ourselves”. When might that have been? Liel was ambassador from 1992 t0 1994, during the transition period when apartheid was ebbing away; Baruch was ambassador from 2005 to 2008.
Israel has many faults but apartheid is not one of them. Those who make the equation either lack knowledge or are politically driven by hatred of the Jewish state to have Israel declared the same evil as was apartheid South Africa and hence subject to international boycotts.

Benjamin Pogrund was deputy editor of the former Rand Daily Mail. His books include Robert Sobukwe: How Can Man Die Better, and Drawing Fire: Investigating the Accusations of Apartheid in Israel. He has been awarded the Order of Ikhamanga Silver.

Thank you for writing a decent and truthful account of the situation in Palestine. I'm sure you will hear strong opposing views from multiple Israelis who live on the greener side of the fence and have no idea how Palestinians live or the hardships they face every day because of the true facts that were mentioned in this article. Yes they will claim they know how Palestinians go through their day and how just and equally treated they are alongside Israelis which are far from the truth. I'm a Palestinian who lived there most of my life and still have my ties there. I can attest 100% to the facts stated in this article, which are only scratching the surface about atrocities committed by Israel.

Now excuse me if I don't use my real name here because I want to avoid being targeted by Israeli intelligence while traveling across Palestine partial areas or crossing the Israeli controlled Palestinian borders. I want to avoid the questioning and possibly imprisonment due to responding to this article and speaking against Israel. Israelis cross the borders without question, which is a luxury that we don't have as Palestinians. But I'm sure Israeli accounts will forget to mention that too.

Thank you,

I know Ilan Baruch and Alon Liel well and on a personal level like them.
This short article is far too simple and deliberately avoids discussing the bigger issue nor history. The areas shown in the map are a result of the Oslo Accords agreed to between Israel and the Palestinians.
Under Jordan the Arabs never sought an independent state.
Failed attempts at peace and establishing a Palestinian state:
1967 - U.N. Security Council Resolution 242
1978 - Camp David agreement
1991 - Madrid Summit
1993-1995 - Declaration of Principles/Oslo Accords
2000 - Camp David summit
2002-2003 - Bush Declaration/Arab peace initiative/Road Map
2007 - Annapolis summit
2013 - 2014 - Washington peace talks/negotiations collapse
June 2019 - Trump economic plan announced
There is no such thing as Apartheid in Israel proper, nor, whilst the map is conveniently abused, is it Apartheid. All citizens, Jewish, Arab, Druse, Christian et al in Israel proper all have full citizenship.
Baruch and Liel’s arguments are negated by ignoring the dangers of attacks from the Palestinian areas including Gaza., the intifadas instituted by Arafat after Camp David and the recent uprising by local Arabs in Israel.
An election will obviously bring Hamas into Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and this will create another Gaza right in the middle of Israel, rockets, missiles and mortars and cross border attacks. Israel live between 1948 and 1967 with endless cross-border attacks. The border then as a armistice line appropriately call the “Auschwitz borders” by then Foreign Minister Abba Eban. Plain logic and common sense cannot allow this and Baruch and Liel ignore this reality as they are both extreme politically left individuals with their own agendas.

What this article ignores is the culture of the Palestinians. It ignores their lack of leadership whether it is Hamas in Gaza or Fatah in the Palestinian Authority.
Baruch and Liel’s letter is a deliberate one-sided attack on Israel’s government, all very well in utopia and cloud cuckoo land.

Hardly enough space to fully tackle the subject.

The ambassadors are not the only people to accuse Israel of apartheid. Every human rights group including Israel's B'Tselem say it is apartheid. In addition to the Ambassadors, a former Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo, said it is apartheid. A former attorney general wrote in an Irish journal how he enabled apartheid. The most damning accusation of them all came from an Israeli former general who said that in the West Bank it is apartheid and Israel is treating Palestinians in much the way that the Nazis treated the Jews.
No matter how defenders of Israel want to deny it, the system in the West Bank is an apartheid system.